In this paper we consider the problem of low power SpO2 sensors for acquiring Photoplethysmograph (PPG) signals. Most of the power in SpO2 sensors goes to lighting red and infra-red LEDs. We use compressive sensing to lower the amount of time LEDs are lit, thereby reducing the signal acquisition power. We observe power savings by a factor that is comparable to the sampling rate. At the receiver, we reconstruct the signal with suffcient integrity for a given task. Here we consider the tasks of heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) estimation. For BP estimation we use ECG signals along with the reconstructed PPG waveform. We show that the reconstruction quality can be improved at the cost of increasing compressed sensing bandwidth and receiver complexity for a given task. We present HR and BP estimation results using the MIMIC databas

This article describes a medication management service concept for visually challenged older users. The service transforms medication information into speech. This can help visually challenged individuals to identify medication, and to find dosage and other consumption-related information. The user interface is based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which makes it possible to write and read data in tags, which can be attached to medication packages. A speech synthesizer transforms the text stored in the tag into audio message. A complete service covering the service chain from pharmacy to user’s home was implemented and evaluated. Findings from a field trial are presented, exploring how the service was adopted in the medication management. The results show that, while the users found the service easy to learn and use, they found the service concept difficult to integrate with their existing medication management practices.

Applications requiring monitoring such as medical and habitat monitoring, pose a great challenge to sensor network protocols. Power consumption in wireless sensor networks is largely constrained in each node of the network due to the size and the availability of the energy resources. Therefore, having an enhanced scheme that can save transmission energy is ideal. This paper presents an energy efficient and fault tolerant algorithm for routing in wireless sensor networks, which meets sensor networks requirements for monitoring systems that huge amount of events are sensed in them. The algorithm constructs a hierarchy tree over the network and maintains the distribution of energy by restructuring the hierarchy tree over time. The proposed idea was implemented using PARSEC and compared to the HPEQ protocol. Evaluations showed that the proposed algorithm is proper solution for systems with high amount of data sensed because of efficient energy distribution in the network and the ability to aggregate iterative data hierarchically.

For participants of diabetes prevention programs, we consider that it is effective to record vital signs, such as weight and blood pressure, and to receive instruction based on such readings during the follow-up period in order to avoid rebound. Although the Internet is an effective medium for recording data and reporting everyday health status, health support systems that require the use of a PC can place a heavy burden on users, especially elderly users. In this research, we utilized a sensor information web service which is a home network based on ZigBee, and discuss effective implementation of a follow-up system. We explained and demonstrated the proposed system to participants who had completed a diabetes prevention program and administered a questionnaire about their impression of system use. From the questionnaire results, we clarify the considerations and requirements necessary for introducing such a home network system with the elderly.

Mobile communication technologies could strongly help in facing health emergency situation. Thanks to wireless communication techniques, real time audio, video, medical parameters transmission and information storage are nowadays possible. Electrocardiogram, blood pressure and other patient's information are sent to a remote hospital/medical database center server. Actions taken by the emergency staff are stored for real time operative-center interaction and for a successive database consultation. The emergency video recording is often useful as legal evidence in case of disputation. In this paper a real time connection telemedical system is described. The system is based on low-cost consumer technologies such as GPRS and WiFi for low-band data/video transmission, H.264 for the real time video stream encoding and database video storage. A relational database has been used for store and query data All system is based on Microsoft .Net technology allowing great portability and stability to overall modules, such as HMI (human machine interface) and multimedia codecs

The ageing of the population, the growth of chronic diseases, and the explosion of healthcare costs jeopardise the sustainability of healthcare systems in many European countries. This opens opportunities for innovative prevention and healthcare services supported by information and communication technologies (ICT). The natural focus for providing such services is the home. However, the e-health services provided in the home so far are limited in scope and fragmented. This paper suggests a comprehensive service model for home-based e-health services in Europe, which aims to overcome the current service fragmentation. The Health@Home model integrates disease prevention and healthcare for different groups of citizens at different stages on the health scale. The technical challenge of this model is the national and Europe-wide integration of heterogeneous systems and services in a way that makes them reliable and easy to use for all citizens, particularly those with low technical abilities and severe impairments.

Health care processes are nowadays heavily dependent on Information Technology (IT). On the other side, assessing a higher quality of health care to patients has become increasingly important. Effective health care processes are thereby heavily dependent on a comprehensive IT-support. Therefore, a thorough understanding about both the hospital IT-systems and clinical pathways is required, to identify quality problems. Improving quality of care through process performance measurement in hospitals and the identification of bottlenecks in performed workflows is thereby a promising concept. On this account we propose a novel approach based on an inpatient reference process model aiming a standardized and automated retrieval of quality and performance metrics along the clinical pathways of time-critical diseases in the context of various clinical standards and systems.

The introduction of sophisticated information, communications and technology into health care is not a simple task, as demonstrated by the difficulties encountered by the Department of Health’s multi-billion programme for the NHS. This programme has successfully implemented much of the infrastructure needed to support the activities of the NHS, but has made less progress with electronic patient records. The case for health records that are focused on the individual patient will be outlined, and the need for these to be underpinned by professionally agreed standards for structure and content. Some of the challenges will be discussed, and the benefits to health care and clinical research will be explored.

In wireless sensor networks, fault tolerance represents a key issue and a design goal of primary concern. Indeed, nodes in wireless sensor networks are prone to failures due to energy depletion or hostile environments. Multipath routing protocols are a category of solutions which enables the network to operate properly despite of faults. In this paper, we present a new multipath routing protocol which provides strong fault tolerance by increasing the number of constructed paths up to three times in some scenarios. Our protocol relies on a new multipath construction paradigm that we have defined specifically for heterogeneous WSN. We call this paradigm: energy-node-disjointness. Our approach leverages a reasonable increase in the cost of the network to a longer network lifetime and a higher resilience and fault tolerance.

Healthcare is an increasingly collaborative enterprise, involving many individuals and organizations. The ability to provide readily access to integrated healthcare services remotely is now essential. Although Grid technology can support the integration of healthcare services across settings of care and among providers of care, it doesn’t make these services available to authorized users at the point of care when needed. The integration of mobile and wireless devices with Grid technology can provide ubiquitous and pervasive access to Grid services. This paper presents HDGPortal, a Grid portal application which provides access to workflow-based healthcare processes using wireless Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). HDGPortal’s architecture is based on wrapping the workflow applications as web services and web service resources. These services are available to users through a number of Grid portal components that can be used for workflow enactment. HDGPortal has been implemented with a multi-layered security infrastructure in order to ensure secure access to healthcare processes.